Chapter Eight
Phase II: Discover
Insight, the big-picture view of why, what, and how everything fits together, is the holy grail of innovation. As we reviewed in Chapter Six, the moment of insight is a physical event in the brain when seemingly unrelated bits of information are connected, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, to form a new conceptual map of your situation. Suddenly, new opportunities and solutions come into view.
Using this knowledge of insight as a neurological phenomenon, the Discover phase of the ZoD method is designed to coax the brain to make these leaps of understanding. The insight-generating process is accomplished through a sequence of three steps that build associative fluency in the right brain, where insights are born. We'll look more at each of these steps later in this chapter, but here is a brief outline:
Four Forces Scan
The feeling that “something is going on here” was your first nudge toward the ZoD. In Define, you framed the journey by posing a problem-solving Best Question. Then, you drilled down into it, asking lots of questions to help you get your arms around what you know about the issue at hand and what needs further investigation.
To find an answer to this question, you need to understand more about the issue itself. What's driving it? What are the long-term implications? What does it means for you? To get to this level of understanding, you have to step back to see how the issue has emerged in the context of the four forces. All innovation and long-term planning projects begin here.
In Chapter Eleven, you will be see how a four forces scan is conducted for a business that, if it didn't reinvent its business model, would soon become irrelevant.
The nature of discovery is that you don't know exactly what you'll find, but you trust that you'll know it when you see it. You're not heading out willy-nilly, however. This is a focused expedition for which you need a few reliable right-brain tools to guide you. These tools are fail-safe and certain to lead you to territory that is ripe with valuable ideas and insights.
Your foundational tool, of course, is the Best Question you identified in the Define phase of the process. This is what you use to plan your journey and to check in along the way to see if you're still on the right path.
However, the tool you'll use most as you move through each of the three steps in the Zone of Discovery—Pour and Stir, Play and Make, Dream and Scheme, discussed in detail later in this chapter—is a handy, all-purpose tool of discovery I call “Like that!”
Like That!
There are two general types of Like that!s that you'll use in the ZoD: existing Like that!s and emerging Like that!s.
Existing Like that!s are examples of the kind of solution you're looking for, or just elements of it. It can be a brand, organization, experience, color, person, place, product, interaction, culture, or feeling that resonates and makes you say, “Yeah, like that.” These examples are great references for you throughout the Discover phase.
Whether you want to remodel your home, start a business, find a relationship, or end hunger, starting with Like that!s is a terrific way to stretch your brain and to start seeing the people, possibilities, and places that nurture and advance who you are and where you're going. Like that! is a valuable indicator of what you like, what you do well, and what inspires you and, as such, helps you find the path between who you are and where you're going. As you move forward in life—as an organization or as a person—I encourage you to become an avid collector of Like that!s. You will find them invaluable as “way-finders,” particularly in those times when you don't know exactly what to do, but you know you need to make the best next decision you can, which is simply to move toward something that inspires you. In the process of doing so, you will discover what's right for you.
Existing Like that!s are real-world examples of things that inspire you—ideas that have already been formed and executed in the real world. Emerging Like that!s, in contrast, occur as a mental tug when you are close to making a discovery. As if it were playing the childhood game of Warmer-Colder, your internal monitor lights up when something feels right, as if to say, “You're getting warmer . . . warmer . . . warmer . . . ” Then, suddenly, “Ding! Ding! Ding! You're on it!” A discovery has been made.
The emerging Like that!s are especially important in the Discover phase of the ZoD (the focus of which is new thinking, after all). There are three categories, each distinguished by a different kind of neural activity. They are Awe, Aww, and Aha! which I introduced in Chapter Six.
Awe
What it is. Awe is a right-brain state of wonder. It stirs a curiosity about your world, its interconnectedness, complexity, beauty, and mystery. It suggests a kind of philosophical musing on how and why things work as they do, in which the mind looks for the connection between small wonders of a personal nature and a grand scheme of natural phenomena.
Why it's important. Awe is the brain's attempt to get the big picture, to see how everything connects. Awe draws on an innate capacity for systems thinking, in which all elements are seen as an interdependent whole.
Aww
What it is. Aww is an emotional resonance with other people and situations. It is instantaneous empathy, a deep understanding of someone else's experience. Empathy extends your emotional vocabulary for imagining what conditions other than your own feel like.
Why it's important. Aww helps you anticipate, and gives you insight into, circumstances outside your direct experience, so that you can imagine possibilities and solve problems from a distance.
Aha!
What it is. Aha! is a right-brain cognitive breakthrough in which a solution or opportunity is suddenly obvious in left-brain terms.1 Such insights are the big payoff of associative fluency, in which distinct data sets or memories are connected for a richer perspective. This experience is typically described in terms of sight, as in “I've never seen it like that before!” or “All of a sudden, I saw the answer.”
Why it's important. These bursts of connection, when puzzle pieces fall together, are the moments when nebulous ideas find form. Because your understanding is suddenly complete, the ideas have structure and context, fully ready for the transition back to left-brain planning mode in Phase III: Distill.
The objective of a ZoD program is to produce smart, relevant solutions for your Best Questions. The role of the Discover phase is to trigger the Like that! response—the Awe, Aww, and Aha!—that gives you direction. To that end, when you are exploring your ultimate purpose—who you are and where you're going—the Discover phase always has the same arc, which I outlined earlier: Pour and Stir, Play and Make, and Dream and Scheme.
Pour and Stir
Because introducing new information and experiences is how we spark new thinking and understanding in the brain, Pour and Stir activities are all about pouring a cocktail of new stimuli in which you immerse yourself, then stir, with the aim of triggering Like that! responses.
Among your inputs will be information gathered as a part of your four forces scan, collected from newspapers, Twitter, Web sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, news sites, newsletters, magazines, books, interviews, book reviews, presentations, reports, surveys, interviews, seminars, chat rooms, trend observers, advertisers, philosophers, sociologists, management gurus, your third grader's best friend—anyone or anything that adds a fresh twist to the cocktail.
Play and Make
In his best-selling book Play, Stuart Brown, head of the National Institute for Play (yes, there is such a thing), explores the science behind his assertion that play enables us to more effectively innovate and problem-solve, not to mention lead happier, more resilient lives. Stuart opened the PUSH 2006 conference for us, stating that “The state of play is what allows us to explore the possible.” That exploration is the purpose of the Discover phase—but too often, we leave play behind when we enter adulthood. Not here. Focused play is how we process all the stimuli we gathered during Pour and Stir. As a largely right-brain activity, Play and Make is mediated through three kinds of activities:
This is where, if you are anything like the clients I have worked with in person, some artful seduction is needed to coax you out of left-brain mode to avoid eye rolling and protestations. Playing music is always a good transition; its ability to move us from left-brain concentration to right-brain openness is immediate and visceral. Think of the effect Pachelbel's Canon has on a group. Within a few bars, anyone within earshot will join in a collective experience best defined by a swelling of the heart and the shedding of tears—interesting, both in joy (when the Canon is played at weddings) and grief (for funerals). Similarly, Handel's Messiah has the power to move the busy interior mind chatter of a group of any size—from ten to ten thousand—into a collective experience of worship and awe. It doesn't have to be classical: country, rock, rap—any rhythm will do. I often start workshops with “walk-in” music, whether funny and happy, dark and pensive, surprising and bombastic—whatever best introduces the concept we're exploring or the activity we're about to begin.
Video will also do the trick, creating a similar sense of trust and welcome—and the requisite right-brain shift. Simply scan the Internet for a myriad of options. It might be a clip from an old movie, stop-motion animation, news clip, music video, speech, funny cat video, or, perhaps, something you've created yourself. Once the right brain is open, you're ready to play. As Brown says, nothing fires up the brain like play, which is born of curiosity and exploration.
The job of Play and Make is to sneak a little focus and structure into that curiosity and exploration. To that end, I often create a Sensory Circuit that is similar in design to strength training regimens. This design allows you to move from one station to another, focusing on a new “muscle group” (sensory input) at every stop. A poetry station might be followed by a tasting station, followed by building blocks, different scents to sniff—the possibilities are endless. As long as it yields fodder for the Best Question being explored, it's fair game.
At the end of this stage, with updated Aha! and Like that! lists in hand, you will make something to share with the group: a collage, a sculpture, a treasure hunt, a game, or if you're lucky, as I was with one of the clients you'll soon be reading about, a delicious plate of scrambled eggs.
Whatever its result, the final act of making something specific and purposeful out of the whimsical and apparently purposeless play shifts the brain back to the left and allows you to discover a solution to your Best Question.
Dream and Scheme
This is where things get exciting. The associative connections created during Play and Make give way to so many insights that you may feel a physical as well as mental bounciness. Armed with the overview of the solution that you created in Play and Make, you now get to fill in the details in a space without judgment. Your job is to take the seed of an idea and have it grow as big and as bold as you can. The rest of the process will help you prune it back, so you're perfectly safe. Take the idea outside the knowns—outside your industry, geography, product line, conventional practice—take it even further into a full-on fantasy version of a vision; this is a no-holds-barred exercise in “having it all.” Run through what I call an “Else Check.” What else could we do? How else? When else? Virgin's Else Check includes putting a hotel on the moon, for goodness' sake; you can already buy your flight there. Go on—bet everything you've got on the boldness of this vision. Dream big.
Then take a breath and get ready to get real; look at your exciting new reality—your transformational moment—with an editor's eye. Scheme. Step back and see if there are redundancies. Consolidate your ideas and insights. Categorize the different types of products, services, conditions, and interactions that are necessary to trigger the transformational moment. This last set of insights is the key to your future. They unlock the vision, the solution, and the strategy to fulfill your future potential—the scheme within your dream, in other words.
Now it's time to factor reality back in, and evaluate what it really takes to create this dream in terms of time, people, and money. In the process, you'll parse the dream into distinct projects that follow an evolutionary path, beginning with immediate needs and extending, project by project, to the fulfillment of your ultimate, have-it-all scenario. This is your Now-to-Future Portfolio, produced in the third phase of the ZoD, Distill.